Confronted with high gasoline prices and with global warming, there is a growing movement to ride clean, ride together, and ride less. Millions are improving the quality of their life and feeling better about being true to their values. Save Gas, Save the Planet brings us the stories of people reducing greenhouse gas emissions and being rewarded with better lives.

Americans drove 100 billion less miles during 2008 as they first adjusted to record summer gas prices, then a severe recession, then the discovery of better ways to travel.

Because of soaring oil prices, vehicle costs, maintenance, insurance, and parking, the American Automobile Association calculates that U.S. driver now spends $8,000 per year on each vehicle. Save Gas, Save the Planet gives readers practical strategies for making incremental changes to ride clean, ride together, and ride less.

Myths are shattered with facts. There is a myth that solutions are twenty years in the future. The fact is that every day people drive high-mileage cars, plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles, turbo diesels, biofuel and hydrogen vehicles. There is a growing abundance of new vehicle offerings.

Different people have divergent requirements that are best addressed with a variety of vehicles in combination with lifestyle improvements, flexible work, employer commute programs, sharing vehicles, driving less, and walking more.

Learn about the new trends of riding clean, riding together, and riding less in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet

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Owning two SUVs and also wanting a major improvement in fuel economy, the Eubank family asked, “What should our next car be? Should we buy now, or wait?” Their needs included transporting several kids and an aging parent in safety and comfort. In the end, they bought a fuel-efficient hybrid car and changed their lifestyle.

Bob liked the safety of their current SUVs. His safety concerns were increasing as his daughter, Meili, approached driving age. As a protective father, his first instinct was to get a Hummer, or at least an armored-plated Volvo station wagon. Meili, an “A” student who had written papers about the environment, liked the idea of an electric car. Her brother Tai, who also cared about the environment, said his favorite vehicle was his bicycle.

Weihong, as a busy mother and business owner, weighed practical issues such as having room for several people, school stuff, sports equipment, storage boxes for their businesses and more.

Bob and Weihong are parents who want their children to have great education and a childhood rich in opportunity and positive experiences. They also want their children to have a secure future. Without sacrificing safety or vehicle needs, the Eubanks now live in better harmony with their values about energy security and being environmentally friendly.

The Eubanks have doubled their miles per gallon and tripled their smiles per gallon.

The book is empathetic with people who need bigger vehicles, smaller cars, SUVs, trucks, and minivans. Real-life stories show that people can dramatically cut their payments at the pump.

Learn about your new car choices and the future of transportation in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet

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Tom Hanks has supported improving the environment for years, both with words and actions. He owns more than one electric vehicle. “I still have a Toyota RAV4 EV and never spent a penny on gasoline for it,” he said. Tom Hanks reflected about the importance of zero-emission vehicles, “Growing up in northern California has had a big influence on my love and respect for the outdoors. Unfortunately, I have witnessed in my lifetime a great loss of wilderness areas. I hope that the world gains an appreciation for what’s here and does everything it can to protect it. I want my children and all of their children to enjoy the same wonders I experienced as a boy.”

Who killed the electric car? No one. There are 40,000 electric vehicles in use in the United States today. The chapter opens with how Kacey Childers and her daughters meet their daily needs with an electric vehicle with a 25-mile per hour top speed. The Childers feel good about going green. Range and speed have not been a big deal because of the quality of life in their city.

Several automakers will soon be selling electric vehicles in the United States that you can charge in your garage and other places. Some will give you a range of over 100 miles between charges, drive at freeway speeds, and cost less than $30,000. The race to market includes Nissan, Renault, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Subaru, and emerging players such as Think, Smart, BYD, Tesla, Miles, ZENN, and a host of other companies.

In households with two or more vehicles, one could be 100 percent electric, saving thousands per year on fuel.

Learn about new electric vehicles and the future of transportation in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet

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“Daddy, why is that car following us? Why are they honking?” Three year-old Genevieve cried out. “Everything is fine, sweetheart. They want to learn how we are getting 100 miles per gallon.” Her father, Sven Thesen, was calm and reassuring.

Genevieve and her younger sister, Sophia, returned to their tranquil state and smiled. They were getting used to the attention. In their eyes, their parents were becoming famous for driving a Toyota Prius modified to have extra batteries be recharged each night. Sven Thesen spent about $5,000 to upgrade their Prius to a plug-in hybrid.

Sven programs the nightly charging to start at 10:30 p.m. when electric rates are the lowest. Although gasoline prices are rocketing, short trips in all-electric mode only cost about two cents per mile. Charging is as simple as using a standard 110 volt outlet in the garage.

Sven and his wife Kate are environmentalists who are quite concerned about their daughters’ future and the future of all children. They educate others each time they drive.

Kate and Sven are determined to make a difference. They are rewarded by saving a fortune in fuel. On many trips, the car uses zero fuel. The Thesens share the plug-in Prius as their only car. In his previous job, Sven biked to the train which he took to work in the city. His wife is the primary user of their 100 mpg wonder, driving to her local medical practice. They go to a gas station only once a month.

GM and Toyota have announced plans to start selling plug-in hybrids in 2010. Hundreds of drivers are not waiting for the big auto makers. They are using plug-in conversion kits with advanced batteries to achieve over 100 miles per gallon. This chapter includes the stories of some early drivers of plug-ins including the inventor Andy Frank.

Learn about new plug-in hybrids, conversions, and the future of transportation in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet

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After 40 years of fighting and law suits it was all smiles between auto executives from Detroit and the regulators of California’s health and emissions. On April 20, 2004, a new governor signed the historic California Hydrogen Highways Executive Order.

Terry Tamminen, then Secretary California Environmental Protection Agency, now an environmental consultant and author of Lives per Gallon, stated, “The basic motor vehicle has changed little in over a century, while air pollution sends one in seven children in this region to school every day carrying asthma inhalers….Four decades ago, President Kennedy’s bold leadership sent Americans to the moon using hydrogen fuel and fuel cells. Today we can certainly harness that same technology to take us to work, to school, and on a family vacation.”

Terry Tamminen now drives a Honda FCX hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. The car is an electric vehicle that gets its power from an electric motor and captures braking energy into advanced batteries. The car also has a fuel cell which takes hydrogen from the onboard fuel tank and makes continuous electricity.

Major auto makers are looking for hundreds of individuals and families to participate in early demonstrations of driving hydrogen vehicles. These people will join the thousands that currently ride daily in hydrogen fleet cars, trucks, SUVs, and buses.

Examined are both sides of controversies about hydrogen. When coal power is used, making hydrogen with electrolysis increases total greenhouse gases. In other cases, everything from solar electrolysis to pipelined “waste” hydrogen is providing zero-emission solutions.

A growing number of cities dream of having zero emissions. Electric rail, electric cars, hydrogen trucks, buses, and hydrogen cars will all be part of zero emission solutions. The chapter includes stories from actual hydrogen vehicle users.

Read about the complex debate about natural gas and hydrogen vehicles and about the future of transportation in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet.

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New Year’s resolutions are easy to make, but often not kept, especially when the price tag is $45,000. In January 2002, Michael Mora convinced his wife that they should buy a Toyota RAV4 electric vehicle for $45,000. Michael had to practically beg the dealer to sell his last one. Because this popular electric-vehicle is no longer sold, Michael could sell his RAV4 EV as a used-vehicle for more than he paid for it.

Michael is not selling. His commute energy is provided by ‘free-range’ electrons from the solar power system installed on the roof of his employer, a California solar PV system integrator. The daily cost to drive the vehicle is zero. He can drive freeway speeds with a 100 mile range.

I talked with Michael while he was volunteering his day to educate others during a solar home tour. Michael talked with enthusiasm about solar power, energy efficiency, and his electric car. His smiles were as constant as the sunlight. Michael could no more hide is happiness than a dog can disguise a wagging tail. Michael is living true to his beliefs; standing tall as the trees that lined the green street. Michael is traveling on sunlight.

For a growing number of people, “riding on sunlight” is their daily reality. For others, it is a metaphor for their future use of zero-emission vehicles powered by renewable energy. More regions are generating electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, bioenergy, geothermal, and hydro power. Scientific studies repeatedly document that we have enough renewable energy to meet all our needs for electricity and transportation.

Learn about the future of transportation in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet.

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Journey through Mendocino County where quiet roads take you past green vineyards and happy communities with farm homes and country stores. The roads will ascend through rolling hills covered with live oak, continue into mountains with hundred mile vistas, and then descend into majestic redwoods, until you arrive at rugged cliffs overseeing the Pacific Ocean.

Mendocino County is now home to a growing number of people who want to live sustainably and home to Parducci, the first winery in the U.S. to reach a carbon neutral status. They installed solar power, utilize biodiesel in their farm vehicles, use energy efficient florescent lighting, and plant trees.

A new home in Mendocino County inspired Louisa Aronow and Sandy Turner to move their family from New England to California in their 1989 VW Jetta, averaging 45 miles per gallon. Crossing the nation, fill-ups were often 100% biodiesel fuel that was processed from local soy fields and local waste. Sandy and Louisa also used the move to make the big decision to be a husband and wife who share a single vehicle. The decision has helped them enjoy bicycling, walking and using public transit.

Needed is biofuels from wood and waste, not food and haste. Progress that is being made to create fuel from waste sources and from cellulosic energy crops with many times the yield per acre of food sources such as corn and soy. Readers may be surprised to learn that ethanol may not become a major fuel solution; a better solution may be gasoline and diesel made from wood and waste, blended with less petroleum.

Get 20 pages of details about the latest in biofuels and the future of transportation in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet.

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My ninth trip to teach a workshop at Two World Trade Center never happened because of the great tragedy 9/11. For years Sun Microsystems, my former employer, had invited me to conduct a series of workshops about technology and strategy. Much of the Wall Street ran on Sun servers, Java applications, and Sun network technology. Reliability, performance, and the ability to recover from disaster were reasons that New York continued to run after the disaster. Sun’s tagline was reality – “The Network is the Computer.”

On September 11, 2001, thanks to heroes like Avel Villanueva the hundreds of people working for Sun Microsystems in Two World Trade Center all quickly evacuated the building and survived. When Avel saw the damage and fire at One World Trade Center, he paged everyone to leave the building as quickly as they could stating “Please, with calmness, go to the nearest exit. This is not a drill. Get out.” He repeated this from the reception area several times. Only after several pages and inspecting the vast 25^th and 26^th floors did Avel personally leave. Three minutes later the second plane hit Two World Trade Center.

Although it must have been difficult to continue working after such a tragedy, the people at Sun understood that New York depended on their ability to keep working. Within 24 hours almost all Sun employees were doing their jobs at other Sun locations, homes, even nearby cafes. Sun effectively used its own networking technology with an iWork program that enables employees to work at home, at an office near their home, or be highly productive anywhere with a mobile device and wireless network connection.

People are most effective working some days at one location, other times at home, others at a customer or supplier location. Readers can take advantage of the new flexible workplace solutions to annually save millions of wasted hours and billions of dollars of fuel.

Learn about the future of flexwork, air travel, high-speed rail, and the future of transportation in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet.

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My parents fell in love while riding together on a street car in Little Rock, Arkansas. If they had both been driving solo in cars, their romance would have never kindled. Cupid continues to ride public transit. Single people explain that rapid transit is about more than time and money. One of Chicago’s popular routes has been dubbed “The Love Bus” with frequent reports of romance that started on a ride home from work.

Transit and commute programs grow in popularity. Thirty-six percent of Yahoo headquarters employees get to work without driving solo, reported Danielle Bricker, one of Yahoo’s dedicated Commute Coordinators. Yahoo’s commute program is comprehensive, popular, and getting results. Danielle practices what she preaches. For three years, she has commuted 90-miles daily without owning a car. She commutes by train, using her bicycle to handle the “last mile” at both ends. Intermodal commuting is used by many.

Yahoo encourages the use of a zero-emission vehicle owned by one billion people on this planet – the bicycle. Yahoo provides employees with free Eco-Passes for bus and light rail on VTA, the area’s rapid transit provider. Many of the Yahoo commuters are able to get extra work done using laptops and other mobile devices while commuting on transit.

Employees are receiving up to $1,380 per year, tax free, to be creative commuters. If two people share a ride to and from work, they use half the gas that they would use driving separately. If everyone doubled-up on all rides and used fuel-efficient vehicles, then the United States would need no foreign oil. Public transit is the mode of transportation for hundreds of millions daily as they go to work, play, and home. People share the ride on light rail, subways, and buses. Where transit is popular, locals always rate their cities at the top for places to live.

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As Nora Alcala and Sophia Toh drive the narrow road to the estate, they can almost touch the grapes that ripen for the bountiful harvest that will soon arrive. Every green leaf and purple grape is vivid in the summer sun. Looking far up the Sonoma foothills, the endless rows of manicured vines finally give way to the live oak and evergreens.

Living together in the heart of San Francisco, they can share one car. Each walks to work. Transit and an occasional cab meet their other city transportation needs. The wine country escape had been the first time in two weeks that the car had been used.

Almost unstated is the thousands that are saved by sharing one car, and only using it on occasion. How can they use all that extra cash? Enjoying the weekend in historic Sonoma in the heart of California wine country seemed like a perfect start.

Nora finds that walking everywhere keeps her in shape. Sophia also appreciates the natural exercise that is part of her daily life because of walking. With all the calories burned in a lifestyle active with walking, each course of the afternoon banquet could be enjoyed without any concern. Wine can best be appreciated by viewing the clarity, experiencing the complexities in the aroma, tasting the balance and savoring the moment. So, it seems, is a life balanced with a little driving and rich in walking in the open air and streaming sunlight.

In many two-vehicle households, one vehicle gets much better fuel economy than the other. George’s truck gets 16 miles per gallon. Mary’s hybrid sedan gets triple the mileage at 48. If Mary is working at home one day, George can save a bundle by driving the hybrid. People who look at their weekly schedule can plan to put the most miles on the fuel miser. People sharing vehicles in a household included married, singles, partners, parents and teenagers. New carsharing programs, such as Zipcar, are exploding in popularity.

Learn about the new trends of riding clean, riding together, and riding less in John Addison’s new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet.

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